Today the gym’s hot water system was broken. So after my workout I got to take the mother of all cold showers. Why did I work out anyway? Or why didn’t I just go home to shower? Because I’m OCD enough not to want to break my routine. Oh, and I’m an idiot!
That cold shower reminded me of the River trip I did one year with my brother who taught me the Zen of Vacationing. Which is basically… it’s your vacation, spend it the way YOU want.
Because while I wanted to go with him and his group on the trip, I’m not a water skier, don’t do “ganja” or much alcohol and I was almost the only “single” going. I like to relax and read on vacation, yet still hang out and party with the crowd. He said, “So what. It’s your vacation. We won’t care if you sit in the tent the entire time or come on the boat or whatever. We’ll be having fun and as long as you are too, it’s all good.”
So I followed them in their Suburban, packed with people and stuff, which pulled the boat, also packed with stuff. And our several groups of vacationers met up at the docks of Lake Havasu. We would load the boat up with stuff and people and boat out to a campsite on the Colorado River. Ah, sweet seclusion. It took several trips to get all of us and the stuff out there. But worth it.
Tents went up and the vacation began. Most of the guys would get up at the crack of dawn… literally… to catch the ‘glass’ for water skiing. Sometimes the girls went too but mostly we drifted awake and out of the tent drawn by the smell of coffee. The guys would come back after a couple of hours and we’d blink sleepy at them knowing if we did so they’d cook breakfast. Because by then they were starving! Worked every time. Although us girls did do our share in clean up and lunch.
I love vacationing with this group because they cook a lot (because weed makes you hungry!) and so we had pancakes and eggs and bacon or 3 different kinds of sandwiches for lunch and wonderfully huge dinners as a great base for the Tequila drinking! I distinctly heard one guy crawl out of his tent one night, dig a hole in the sand and hurl. Ah, good times!
But us girls would read books or magazines, occasionally go out in the boat to ski or do the Rock Jump or just cruise down the Colorado River which is so beautiful. Or we’d do our nails or decide we were disgusting enough and wash in the River. Today’s cold shower reminded me of that, except when we did it the air was about 85 degrees and it was very refreshing!
A couple of years later I went on a camping vacation with a boyfriend and I took a book with me. I’d been waiting for this book for months and I’d set aside this quiet time to thoroughly enjoy it. The guys were going “hunting” which in the desert is just an excuse to shoot tin cans and drink, not necessarily in that order… or any order! So I figured they wouldn’t care and it was my vacation too.
Oh the hell I got. “You’re being rude and antisocial, sitting there reading and ignoring us.”
And I realized my brother had achieved the Zen of Vacationing as had all his friends but these guys had not. And no amount of me talking was ever going to explain it to them. Was it their background? Their age? (I was about 8 years their senior) Or was it the fact that my brother lived a lifestyle not everyone approved of and his response to that was… “if I’m going to expect you to respect my life choices, I should respect yours”.
I admire that man to this day. (And he no longer does the evil Ganja… but boy can he cook!)